-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Imagine a star so luminous that it would burn the Earth up if it were anywhere near , a star that outshines the sun as much as the sun outshines the moon . A monster even in the abyss of space .

The star is not some scientist 's celestial dream . Astronomers used a Very Large Telescope -- the instrument 's official name -- to detect the most massive star discovered to date . In scientific lingo , it 's a `` hypergiant . ''

Led by Paul Crowther , professor of astrophysics at England 's University of Sheffield , the team of astronomers studied two young clusters of stars , NGC 3603 and RMC 136a .

R136a1 , found in the RMC 136a cluster , is 10 million times brighter than the sun and is the heaviest star ever found , Crowther said Wednesday , with a mass that is roughly 265 times more than the sun . It was born even heavier , with a solar mass of 320 . Astronomers previously thought 150 to be the upper limit .

Several of the stars studied had surface temperatures of 40,000 degrees , more than seven times hotter than the sun .

R136a1 is rare and resides in another galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud . Its home is more than 165,000 light years away from Earth 's Milky Way galaxy . As such , said Crowther , it is not visible to the naked eye , nor with a rooftop telescope .

`` Owing to the rarity of these monsters , I think it is unlikely that this new record will be broken any time soon , '' Crowther said .

Crowther 's team used the sophisticated infrared equipment on the Very Large Telescope in a European Southern Observatory facility in Chile as well as data collected from the Hubble Space Telescope to detect the colossal star . The telescope is considered the world 's `` biggest eye on the sky '' and is 8 meters -LRB- 26 feet -RRB- in diameter .

The research was published in the current issue of the British scientific journal The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .

`` Unlike people , these kind of stars are massive when they are babies , '' Crowther told CNN . `` They lose weight as they get older . ''

At over a million years old , the star is already middle-aged , Crowther said , and could easily be a poster child for WeightWatchers , having shed a fifth of its initial mass over time because of powerful winds .

In another million years -- a brief life span compared to the sun 's 5 billion years of existence -- the giant star will probably explode as a supernova . It wo n't be noticeable on Earth because it 's so far away .

Crowther , excited about the new find , had to find simple terminology to describe it to his 6-year-old son Billy . Billy , in turn , wanted dad to name the monster star after him .

That might have sounded a whole lot better than R136a1 , but nonetheless , a star is born .

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The newly detected star is 10 million times brighter than the sun

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Its birth weight was 320 times the sun

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Unlike humans , stars are born heavy and lose weight as they get older

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A team of astronomers used a sophisticated telescope in Chile